From: michael k teehan (miketeehan@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Fri Dec 19 1997 - 17:38:18 MST
----------
> From: Michael Lorrey <retroman@together.net>
> To: extropians@extropy.com
> Subject: Re: Mutant Message (was Re: Re Look out! long hair gun loon!)
> Date: Friday, December 19, 1997 7:23 PM
>
> Damien Broderick wrote:
> >
> > >Have you ever read any books written by
> > >people who have actually gotten to spend time with aborigines, who
have
> > >closely studied their culture? If you have you'd find that the
aborigines
> > >are actually a very peaceful, intelligent, and wise people. May I
suggest
> > >Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan.
> >
> > The first point has some merit. Sadly, be warned that the book you
cite is
> > a brainless fabrication, a New Age hoax. (I gather that the publisher,
> > following its debunking, now reprints it as a `novel'.)
> >
>
> Thanks Damien. SOunds like another case of the famous Maya fraud of the
> 30's, where socialist/communist sympathizing archaeologists from British
> and American Ivy League schools developed the preposterous and
> completely unsupported, and eventually debunked theories that the Maya
> civilization was a socialist paradise of peaceful, communistic, unarmed
> innocent heathens.
>
> As it turns out, nothing could have been further from the truth.
> Following a successful harvest, the preist/god/king typically had a
> ceremony in which he sought the advice of the gods/ancestors, etc. by
> piercing his penis with a series of sharpened splinters from different
> trees. The pattern of splattered blood that formed supposedly told him
> what the gods wanted, or that the hallucinogenic state the preist was in
> gave him the illusion he was talking to the gods. In any event, the
> message almost invariably was this: GO TO WAR.
>
> Now the current politically correct theory of central american native
> history was that the crash of that civilization around 800 AD was the
> result of their completely deforesting the Yucatan area. "Let that be a
> lesson to you!"
>
> Australian abos I am not as familiar with, but given the
> bloodthirstyness of New Guineans, Tahitians, and Hawaiians, I would not
> doubt that any "socialist/pacifist paradise" theory of current
> Australian intelligentsia is about as accurate as the Maya one.
>
> --
> TANSTAAFL!!!
> Michael Lorrey
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive
> MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?
>
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